


For an Eye

by pendrecarc



Category: Ys Origin (Video Game)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Magical Accidents, Original Character Death(s), Temporary Blindness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 08:22:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24347944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendrecarc/pseuds/pendrecarc
Summary: Before the invasion of Ys, Hugo confronts the consequences of his father's legacy, his mother's ambitions, and his brother's choices.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	For an Eye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NightsMistress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/gifts).



In one of Hugo’s earliest memories, he ascends to the Solomon Shrine with Toal and their father. He doesn’t remember his mother there; no doubt it was one of the many occasions on which she had something more mysterious and important to do. What he does remember is an endless stretch of long passageways, pillar-lined chambers, and marble steps slightly too tall for his legs. No-one offers to carry him, but even at this age he knows better than to expect it. At one point, Toal must see him struggling, because he reaches down to take Hugo’s hand.

He remembers his first sight of the central chamber and the Black Pearl enthroned in its glory. The acolytes and lesser priests part for their father, who points Hugo to a corner. He resents that, but his legs are shaking from the climb, so he sits down obediently and watches his brother approach the Pearl.

Looking back, Hugo knows he must have been too far away to hear the conversation, but the memory is overlaid with the sound of his father’s voice in an amalgamation of all the lectures he’s heard since: _This room is the seat of all spirit, and the Fact name a charge to consummate that spirit; their blood, their lineage, has been honed for generations to be precisely attuned to the Pearl, and their father’s successor must be next to take up the charge..._

His monologue is interrupted by another ripple of acolytes, and Toal very obviously stops paying attention. Hugo follows his gaze to the far side of the chamber. A woman has just come in—though “woman” is an inadequate description. Great wings are flung back from her shoulders, and a nearly-tangible glow hangs about her. The astonishing depth of her eyes is striking even from Hugo’s forgotten corner.

Noticing his son’s inattention, Cain Fact turns to great Lady Reah with studied courtesy. Toal bows. Such an old-fashioned and courtly gesture should look ridiculous on an adolescent boy, but even overlaid with time and bitterness, the image is still graceful in Hugo’s memory. Reah laughs with a sound clear as chimes. She puts out her hand to raise Toal, then lays the same hand on his smooth, boyish cheek and offers some low words of welcome and approval.

The look in Toal’s eyes lingers long after she is gone, and he doesn’t offer Hugo his hand on the way home.

Hugo sees that same expression years later when Toal stands before their father’s wrath and their mother’s contempt, tall and determined with his silver sword in his hand, casting aside his inheritance like so much chaff.

When he’s old enough to reflect on his brother’s decisions, Hugo realizes none of them should have come as a surprise.  
  


* * *

  
Another thing that should not surprise him: in the wake of Toal’s departure, Hugo’s father appears to forget his existence entirely.

His mother’s manner doesn’t change, but then it never has before. She summons him once or twice a week, listens to his rote words of filial duty with patient unconcern, then beckons him close to put her hand under his chin and look intently into his eyes. He’s never quite sure what she’s looking for. At length she sighs, always, and asks what good his tutors have done him since they spoke last. Can he name the six aspects of strength? When were they separated from the original, unified essence that formed the world, and at whose behest? What is Wisdom, and how does it differ from Spirit?

All these questions are theoretical, and he parrots the answers back at her without any real understanding. This must be obvious to her, but she never scolds him. Her unspoken disappointment buries itself in his bones like a slow-acting poison.

One night he creeps downstairs after he’s been put to bed, the great house silent around him, unaccustomed shadows cast by the glowing sconces in the walls. He makes it halfway back from the kitchen, squashing a cold pastry between the folds of a napkin, when he hears his mother’s voice coming from his father’s study.

“You’re neglecting the boy,” she says. That can only be Hugo himself. He stops outside the door. His heart speeds up at the risk of being caught, but it never occurs to him to hurry back to bed.

His father laughs. Hugo knows the sound perfectly, for all he rarely hears it. “He’s barely old enough to read. What would I want with him now? In a year or two, perhaps.”

That’s nonsense, and his father must know it. Hugo’s been reading perfectly well for years. He’s nearly the same age as Toal was when Toal began his training.

“You’re wasting time.” His mother’s voice is sharp and perfectly even. Hugo’s never heard her sound angry. “He’s learned nothing from his tutors, but that’s only to be expected. Rote lessons! We won’t know what he’s capable of until you try him. Toal showed no signs of promise, either, until you took him in hand.”

“Toal,” says his father, who hasn’t spoken that name in Hugo’s hearing since his eldest left, “was different. Toal was my successor. He was always meant for power. He had the capacity to understand! Yes, he squandered all I gave him, but the raw material was there. This will mean starting again, with no guarantee of success. Let Hugo waste himself a while longer, while I focus my energy on projects that are certain to bear fruit.”

“The fruit we’ve borne already is your responsibility, Cain. Do you truly think, having left my House to form this union, that I’ll see it come to nothing? We had two sons; do your duty by the one who is left, or I'll know you mean to squander everything I’ve given you.”

His father never replies, and eventually Hugo creeps back upstairs. The next morning, his father calls him to his study after breakfast and, without ceremony, tells him his training has begun.  
  


* * *

  
They don’t start with the Eyes. His father doesn’t even mention them. Instead, he sits Hugo down at a table, places a candle before him, and lifts a flame from the wick with a twitch of his hand. “Your first task is to douse the flame,” he says. “You may not move. You may not use your breath to blow it out. Feel the flame, sense its spirit—and take it.”

Hugo never felt any call to magic, but since the inheritance fell to him he’s decided to be mature and dedicated, to show his father he’s ready. That _he_ won’t abandon his responsibilities. But when his father turns away without another word of instruction, he blurts, “What? How am I supposed to do that?”

“You’ll work it out,” his father says, “or you’ll fail.” With that, he sits down at his desk, takes out a heavy leather-bound tome and a sheet of paper, and begins to work.

Hugo might have no idea how to complete this task, but he does know that once his father settles in to his papers, he’s not to be disturbed. In disbelief and annoyance Hugo stares at the candle, wondering if there might be something special about it—some magic about this candle in particular that could make this possible. It looks like one of the ordinary candles used everywhere in the house, just clean-burning beeswax set in a silver candlestick from the formal dining hall where Hugo rarely eats. Hugo squints into the flame until it lingers on the inside of his eyelids when he blinks, hoping something will occur to him, but all that actually happens is that he grows increasingly bored and increasingly hungry. To keep himself awake, he starts swinging his feet under the chair. That works well enough until he accidentally strikes one of the legs hard with his toe.

His father doesn’t look up at the noise. His pen doesn’t stop moving as he says, “If you are too impatient to concentrate for an hour at a time, you will never understand spirit or the power it can bring, and you may as well go back to the schoolroom to memorize that drivel they teach you.” He doesn’t speak again.

That threatened hour turns into two, and then three, until it’s well past the time when Hugo would ordinarily have eaten. At last his father closes the book and comes to stand over him, expressionless. Then he looks at the candle, shakes his head, and suddenly the flame is gone.

He leaves without a word. Hugo decides to take that as a dismissal.

The next morning is more of the same, except Hugo takes care to have an unusually large breakfast first, and as a result he spends most of the session squirming in his chair and wishing he’d stopped before that last cup of tea. This time his father doesn’t bother to shake his head, or even to look at Hugo, when he leaves. He just gives a wave of his hand, and the candle goes out. Hugo’s desperate enough by then not to care. The moment his father is out of sight, he takes off at a sprint, and he doesn’t think about candles or magic or responsibility for the rest of the day.

By the end of the week he’s learned nothing more than how to time his meals. When his mother summons him for an interview, he doesn’t say that. Instead, he sulks under her expectant gaze and finally brings out, “He taught me to look at a candle.”

His mother raises her eyebrows. “That is a skill you might have acquired on your own.”

He doesn’t bother to explain. She’s been through a mage’s training; she must know how this goes. “But he won’t tell me how it works! He just waves his hand and it does what it’s supposed to do. At least my tutors will explain what they want.” He almost misses his lessons on Esterian history.

She tilts her head to one side. His mother isn’t as fair as her husband or as either of her children, and her eyes are so close to black that they might be either brown or the deepest blue. She stares unblinkingly at Hugo. “You’ve spent a week learning how a candle looks. Have you learned yet how it feels?” He has no idea what this means. She sighs, as usual. “Tomorrow morning I am leaving; I will be gone a month, perhaps more. When I return, you will have better answers for me.”

He doesn’t usually get advance notice of her absence. He wants to ask where she’s going. “Yes, mother.”

“Good.” She waves her hand in a gesture that reminds him of his father’s. Like the flame, Hugo goes promptly out.

That night he steals downstairs once again, first to the kitchens—he’s taken to hoarding food in his room, in case his father works through the midday meal again—then to the dining hall, where he collects one of the candles. Up in his room, he sits cross-legged on the floor in front of the candle and lights it, then stares at it while munching absently on the dried Roda fruit he meant to save for later. When the candle fails to offer any unexpected hints, he remembers what his mother said and reaches out to lay his finger on the hard, cold silver of the candlestick. He runs that finger up the strange sticky smoothness of the wax, then steels himself and sticks it right into the flame.

At first, nothing. Then it starts burning, of course, because he’s just put his hand into a _fire_. Hugo yelps, blows the candle out with a vengeance, and sits there in the dark with his finger in his mouth.

In the morning he goes to the housekeeper first thing to have the burn bandaged and to endure being fussed over. The fussing isn’t so bad, really, not that he has any intention of admitting that. It’s only a mild burn, exactly the sort of thing that might be expected of a boy playing stupidly with fire, but it does sting. He’s so busy resenting it when his father sets a new candle down that he glares into the wick even before it lights.

And when the fire catches, Hugo feels it.

He’d been slouched in his seat. Now he jerks upright in pain and surprise as a sudden heat flares up between his eyes, as though his mind is burning from the inside. He snatches his mind back again, and the pain goes away at once. He looks to his father and finds him staring back in fierce exultation. Neither of them says a word. Then Cain Fact goes to sit at his desk.

Over the course of that session, Hugo brushes against the spirit of the fire again and again until his thoughts blister and his collar is damp with sweat. When his father rises, Hugo holds the sensation long enough to feel what it’s like when the candle is doused. The sudden absence of pain is a welcome shock, but he doesn’t know how to reproduce it.

His father gives him an intent look before he leaves. _You see_ , Hugo thinks, _I’m not quite as useless as you thought._ And the next day, he tries again.  
  


* * *

  
That first flush of excitement doesn’t last. Hugo’s on the right track, he’s certain of it, but that doesn’t make the spirit of the flame any less painful. He just gets better at bearing it. Hugo develops a litany of grievances and runs through them as a distraction during each session: grievances against his father, for setting him a task like this without any useful direction; against his mother, for giving him half a clue and then leaving; against his tutors, for preparing him so inadequately for his real responsibilities; against the goddesses, for making magic so difficult and so dull. And always, always against Toal, who did all of this before Hugo and then gave it up.

His mother returns during one of these sessions. He can hear the commotion elsewhere in the house and knows what it means, but it doesn’t—quite—break his concentration. His father gets up and leaves without dismissing Hugo. If Hugo didn’t know better, he’d think Cain looked eager to see her.

She comes for him a few hours later. Hugo is drenched in sweat. He looks up at her and drops the flame from his mind, glad to release the blistering, excruciating heat. She’s taken the time to change out of her traveling clothes and looks cool and collected by contrast. She actually smiles at him. Her trip must have gone well. “Have you worked it out yet?”

“No,” he says; and, even though he’s not sure it’s true, he adds, “but I will soon.”

She nods and raises her hand, and he feels for the flame without thinking. It fades from his mind just before it disappears in reality, and he almost—almost—understands how she did it. “See that you do,” she says, and that is the end of their interview.

Two days later, Hugo puts out the flame.

It doesn’t happen in his father’s study, but on Hugo’s bedroom floor, where he’s been practicing after dark again. He’s had his eyes closed for a while and has been doing everything he can to distract from the pain, and from his tendency to fall asleep despite it. Anger helps with both, so he thinks about Toal, imagining a meeting with his brother again someday when he’s older, when he’s mastered Toal’s birthright. Imagines the look on Toal’s face when he summons the Eyes of Fact. _You didn’t want this power,_ Hugo says, _so I’ve taken it._ And he does—reaches with all his seething anger and takes. And the burning stops.

He opens his eyes to pitch black. He doesn’t realize at first what that means, blinking and wiping the sweat from his face. But then he reaches for the candle again with his mind, and there’s nothing there.

Hugo catches himself before he can shout in triumph. Instead he throws a wild punch into the air, stubbing his fist against his bedframe and scattering candle and matches to all corners of the room. He curses quietly for a few minutes, crawling around on hands and knees until he’s reassembled the experiment. Then he lights the candle and does the whole thing again. And again.

The next morning, he waits for his father to light the candle. Then he puts it out.

He’s had time to imagine this moment: the look on his father’s face when he sees that Hugo is capable, that he understands the spirit of the fire burning before him and inside him, that it’s there to be _taken_. He’s old enough to know the image of his own bright triumph won’t be reflected there, but—satisfaction, surely? Even a nod of approval?

Instead Cain Fact blinks, looking startled and—if anything—displeased. He calls the flame again. “Well?”

Hugo repeats the process. It’s even easier this time.

His father frowns and orders him to turn his back to the table, so he can be sure Hugo isn’t simply blowing it out. “Once more.”

It’s a little harder that way, but Hugo only has to fumble a few moments before he feels that white-hot sensation, concentrates, and wrenches it away. Then he turns around, just to be sure it’s worked, and sees his father gone quiet.

“Very well,” he says, just when Hugo’s begun to wonder if he did it wrong. “Now light it again.”

Hugo does absolutely nothing for the remainder of that session but stare at the cold wick and fume. Once, it occurs to him to wonder how Toal has spent his morning.

When his father leaves, wordlessly signaling the end of their session, Hugo waits an incandescently furious moment, picks up the candlestick, and hurls it through the study’s broad glass window.

The outburst helps with his frustration, but the week he’s confined to his room afterward does not. By the time he’s let out again, though, he knows how to light a candle.  
  


* * *

  
These are the first spells Hugo masters, and the spirit of fire is the first that becomes familiar. The last years of his childhood are spent expanding his acquaintance. He’s introduced to the spirits of every type of stone and metal, some of which lie crushingly heavy on his chest, some of which stab like a knife-point between his eyes. Seashells leave him cold and hollow. Flowers leave odd, dusty tracks up and down his throat, and dragon scales are so disconcertingly smooth his mind goes sliding in all directions for hours after he feels them.

This knowledge comes to him from his father’s rare words of direction, his mother’s rather more direct hints, and eventually from the new tutors his parents hire when his father announces he “can’t always be having the boy underfoot.” The tutors are usually elderly mages from Solomon Shrine, all gifted with magic but deathly dull to talk to. Though at least they do talk to him.

Occasionally the knowledge comes instead from his parents’ library, where he’s never allowed unsupervised. The tutors usually snatch the more powerful books right out of his hands, but sometimes he can take advantage of their failing eyesight to sneak a glimpse of spells that work not on objects but on people, that can sap the spirit and stifle the senses. Enchantments that, when cast on items of sufficient power, can turn them into weapons or tools of extraordinary transformation. When he asks his parents for more access to these books, Cain Fact says nothing. His wife says, “Your father let Toal read anything he liked, even the deepest secrets of this house, and then Toal left. That knowledge was never meant for any but the Fact line.”

 _Not yet_ , is what Hugo hears.  
  


* * *

  
Toal writes to him. The letters are sporadic and smugly cheerful, all about his physical training and his many companions among the other aspiring knights. At first Hugo reads and rereads each letter. Then they become less frequent, and he starts losing interest. Finally one arrives after a gap of six months, on Hugo’s fifteenth birthday. That morning he mastered the spirit of basilisk venom. The agony lingers in his blood, and he’s not in any mood for letters.

So Hugo burns it. He’s gotten good at that.  
  


* * *

  
His mother is home, and his parents have guests.

This doesn’t happen often. Cain Fact is not known for his warm hospitality. He is, however, known for the wealth of his house, expressed tonight with a formal dinner that lasts for a dozen courses and what feels like as many hours. Hugo is there, his hair nicely combed and a starched collar buttoned up his throat, glaring down the table at the boy and girl his own age who’ve come with their guardians. The boy is one of the Gemmas, and some relation of Hugo’s mother; the girl is a Hadal. They were introduced when they arrived, but then they were seated at the opposite end of the table, and he’s forgotten both their names. Both of them keep looking at Hugo. The boy smiles each time, his overlarge round glasses winking in the candlelight. The girl actually _waved_ at him when the first course was brought out. Fortunately, his father didn’t notice.

“Yes, his studies are progressing,” says his father now, as Hugo realizes those two aren’t the only ones looking at him. “He’s far from ready for the Eyes, of course, or any of the greater magics. But I suppose one can’t expect him to be ready so soon.”

“Cain is over-cautious,” says his mother, smiling. She’s seated beside Priest Gemma, who is her aunt, or cousin, or some relation Hugo can’t ever keep track of. “Hugo’s skill needs refinement, but for raw talent—or I should say raw _spirit_ —I have rarely seen his equal.”

“Is that so?” asks Priest Gemma, but she’s not asking either his mother or his father. She’s looking directly at Hugo. While her mouth isn’t smiling, not like his mother’s, the lines at either side of her eyes have grown deeper, as though she’s thinking of a smile. He hates being made fun of. “I don’t suppose you would honor us with a demonstration, Heir Fact.”

Every instinct Hugo has tells him to look to his father, to ask whether this will be allowed, but he isn’t a little child begging for permission. And his mother is still smiling. So he clears his throat and reaches for that very first spell, calling to himself the knowledge of all the flames dancing on all the dozens of candles in the long, imposing dining hall. They flare up white-hot in his head, but they only have a fraction of an instant to burn there before he wrests the spirit out of all of them at once.

The hall goes dark. The conversation at the other end of the table cuts out, and someone drops their spoon.

Then Hugo takes the spirit he’s seized, adds to it all the power he can muster from that fraction of an instant of searing pain, and shoves it back into flame.

Half the guests shove back from the table as a gout of fire erupts from each candle. Nearly everyone here is an experienced mage, so this is followed by spells leaping into life: shields come up, a sheet of stone is cast protectively before the Hadal girl and her guardian, and, at the head of the table, two Eyes of Fact wink into being to either side of his father. His mother only raises her eyebrows in a terribly familiar expression and watches Hugo as he recovers himself, panting. That was not easy.

As everyone realizes they aren’t under attack, they sit warily back down. Glances travel up the table to his father, who has banished the Eyes. Hugo can’t bring himself to look at him directly.

“That,” says Priest Gemma, “was certainly a demonstration of _something_.” The candle before her congeals in a puddle of wax around the smoking remains of a wick.

When Hugo’s mother speaks, it’s as though nothing out of the ordinary has happened. “As I said, raw talent. But as you see, there is a great deal of work to be done. And, perhaps, not all of it is best done at this house.”

“Perhaps not.” Priest Gemma’s eyes are crinkling again. She raises her voice. “You’ll send him to me, Cain—we can put him up for a few months. See if he can’t pick up some Wisdom after all. I’d say he could use it. Rico can keep him company.”

At that, Hugo does look at his father, just in time to see the banked fury pass from his face. There’s still anger there, but it’s buried under a polite mask. “The generosity of House Gemma is commendable.”

His mother reaches for her wine, not entirely bothering to hide a smile behind the rim of her glass.  
  


* * *

  
House Gemma is like nothing Hugo’s experienced. The place teems with people: servants and novices, of course, and extended relations, but also visitors who seem to come in and out without warning. There are children younger than him, as well as young men and women closer to Toal’s age, and all of them take his presence for granted.

Rico is the boy with the glasses, and the first thing he wants to talk about is Hugo’s outburst at that dinner. “There must have been thirty, forty candles on that table!” he says, the moment he gets Hugo alone.

“Sixty-seven,” Hugo says, “if you count the ones in the sconces.” Hugo does count them. He had to scrub all the scorch marks out of the marble himself.

“That’s incredible,” Rico says, perfectly earnest, if a little nervous. “Can you show me?”

Hugo tries. They’re given plenty of free time in House Gemma, most of which is probably supposed to be spent on meditation, but nobody actually checks up on them very much. Rico’s an eager pupil, once he gets over his initial nerves, but that doesn’t help him pick up the knack. He’ll stare for hours at a candle, never once moving—he says the meditating does help with that—but nothing happens. He’s good at other things, though, and it occurs to Hugo that just possibly, Hugo isn’t a very good teacher.

“I don’t think fire’s my element,” Rico confesses. “I’m not _quick_ , either. Not like you were. But I’m working on a translation of a Roonic text you might find relevant. Great-Aunt Varika set me to it after she saw what you did. Did you know, you nearly burnt one of my _eyebrows_ off.”

Varika Gemma is priest of her house and Hugo’s second cousin, thrice removed. (There’s a painting of a family tree in the library, which is open to everyone, so Hugo finally gets the relationship straight.) She doesn’t speak much to Hugo, but when she does it’s always with that odd half-smile. It takes him a while to notice that’s how she looks at almost everyone, and longer to realize she might not be laughing quietly at their expense. It’s possible she just likes to smile.

Nobody here seems to know his mother well, or at least they never say much about her, though they’re willing to talk about anything else. When he asks Rico, he gets the impression she’s not quite the black sheep of the family, but perhaps something of a lone wolf. “That’s fine, of course,” Rico adds quickly. “The pursuit of Wisdom is often a solitary activity.” This has the ring of quotation to it. They’re fond of these sayings in House Gemma. “It’s only, usually you’re expected to share what you’ve found afterward. Most of the family have written articles and treatises. Even the ones who marry and move away send copies back, but your mother only left her novitiate project. She’s never sent anything since then.”

Curious, Hugo makes it a point to read his mother’s work. It’s written in a clear, careful hand, very different from the scrawl he’s seen on notes left for his father and rare letters home from her travels. He finds it a boring read, to be honest, half history and half metallurgy, none of it relevant to his interests. He already knows everything he needs to about the goddesses’ transmutation of silver into cleria when they laid the foundations for the Kingdom of Ys. His mother’s hypothesis about what this did to the spirit of the metal is well-argued, but it doesn’t have any practical application.

When he finishes reading this, he continues to spend a lot of time in the library, since everyone seems to expect and encourage it. To his disappointment, nothing there is as dark and mysterious as the books in the Fact library. Still, not everything is as dull as his mother’s research. There are dusty old tomes on ancient battle techniques and archival records with lurid descriptions of demon raids. They don’t seem any more practical than the history of cleria, but they’re fascinating.

Rico interrupts one of his long afternoons studying demon lore to drag him outside for a breathless game of tag in the sun-drenched gardens. That should feel like a childish waste of time, but it gives him practice calling on the spirits of the trees and fountains to catch Rico’s flying feet in their roots or douse him in water. For the first time, magic is fun.

Sweating, tired, and happier than he can remember being, Hugo slips through one of the house’s back doors beside Rico so they can wash and change for dinner. He pauses at the end of the long hall, which runs the length of the building, to watch an armored group taking their leave at the main entrance. Holy Knights come and go here like so many others, seeking Gemma’s wisdom and favor, so it’s not an unusual sight—but then Hugo glimpses the back of a shining white-blonde head, and all his joy turns bitter.  
  


* * *

  
When three months have passed, Hugo’s mother comes to fetch him. He’s a little surprised she came herself, but he doesn’t say so, only nods at the light touch of her hand on his shoulder in greeting and goes to gather his things. She talks quietly with Priest Gemma while Hugo says goodbye to Rico, a process requiring Hugo to pretend he doesn’t notice the sheen of tears behind Rico’s glasses and Rico to pretend Hugo wasn’t the one who prolonged their hug.

An open carriage waits for them, drawn by power rather than beast. Hugo watches his mother as they drive, searching her face for some resemblance to the people he’s been living and working with. Instead he sees exhaustion, hidden well, but obvious once he notices it. She hasn’t been eating well.

“Where did you go this time?” he asks her, surprising them both.

“I’ve been underground,” she replies. “Excavating one of the oldest cleria mines in Ys. Its wealth was spent generations ago, but the substructure remains.” She gives him an odd, sideways look, and there—that is the resemblance, in the not-quite-smile. Hugo can’t help but feel his mother’s means something different from Priest Gemma’s. “Varika tells me you’ve done some excavating of your own. I hope you found my work an interesting read.”

“I couldn’t really see the point.” Hugo knows this is too blunt, but he’s thrown off his balance by her willingness to hold an actual conversation.

She only laughs. “No doubt you’re right. Tell me what else you’ve learned.”

Hugo prepared for this, as he’s prepared for every such interview, and launches into a litany of borrowed Gemma maxims. Her eyes glaze over a little as he speaks—she must have heard all this dozens or hundreds of times before—but she doesn’t stop him. She seems, in fact, to have retreated into her own world, no more present than when she is traveling.

When the carriage draws up at the gate, she pauses before alighting. “I’ve had words with your father,” she says. “When he summons you again, do exercise some self-restraint. His study is more flammable than the dining hall, and I’d hate to see my arguments undercut by another foolish display.”

That summons comes as expected the following morning. For once, there is no table waiting for him—in fact, the room has been stripped of unnecessary furniture, and his father’s desk is pushed into one corner. When Hugo closes the door behind him, his father nods once and pulls all the curtains. Hugo stands, uncertain, in the center of a room falling gradually into dimness. There is an odd prickling at the back of his neck.

“Now,” says Cain Fact, his face mostly shadow, “we begin.” The air turns electric between them as he extends both his arms, and the Eyes of Fact burn into existence.  
  


* * *

  
The Eyes are like no other magic Hugo has ever tried. He understands, now, why his father took such an odd approach to his education, because there’s nothing his tutors can teach him, nothing the books he borrows from Rico can tell him, that makes it any easier to summon a being of pure spirit. They have minds of their own. It takes months of attempts before his summons are answered at all. Even then, his reward is a single Eye that stares balefully at him before vanishing again into the ether.

Hugo almost misses the hours he spent staring at a candle while his father ignored him. Cain Fact’s complete, undivided attention is not an enviable gift. “They do not obey you because you have no power over them,” he says, day after day. “And you have no power because you will not take it! You’re trapped in your own mind, using your own eyes; all your concerns are mundane, banal, _mortal_. The Eyes know this, and they reject it. So long as your spirit is imprisoned by your lack of ambition, your lack of _imagination_ , they will not serve you. Now close the eyes you were born with, and open instead the eyes of your spirit!”

Hugo tries, he truly does. He stumbles around his father’s study with his eyes shut tight, doing his best to ignore all his physical senses and needs, from hunger to sleepiness to the itch at the end of his nose. It’s humiliating. An Eye comes to him more often when Hugo is closest to forgetting his flesh and blood, as he learns his own spirit the way he once learned the spirit of a flame. Still, at the end of the day, he’s a teenage boy in a body only beginning to come into its own. He misses tearing through the Gemma gardens with Rico, pulling himself up into low-hanging branches and feeling the burn in his arms as he races up to the top of the tallest trees. He misses people who would talk to him of anything other than _spirit_.

He remembers Toal’s letters, all crowing about his friendships and his developing swordsmanship. He tries to imagine his brother suffering through this training. Every day, Hugo understands Toal’s decision a little better and hates him a little more.

Hugo’s mother hears his unsatisfactory report in silence. “Here I can say nothing of value,” she says at last. “The Eyes were never mine to call. But your father has told me of his own education, and the burden it placed on his own spirit. All he required was determination and strength of will.”

“What about Toal?” Hugo asks. He can’t remember the last time he said that name aloud.

His mother regards him curiously. “Toal’s studies never advanced this far. Has Cain not told you?” Hugo’s face must tell her otherwise. “I suppose I oughtn’t be surprised. No, Toal never attempted to master the Eyes. No doubt he has found other power with the Holy Knights.” She lets Hugo hear the bitterness under her words. Again, he thinks, she looks very tired. “Now go—but don’t let your efforts flag. You’ve come too far to turn away from the power you were born to. I will be away for some time, and when I return, you must show me progress.”

And Hugo does make progress. He gets better at letting go of his body and relying on his spirit. But these improvements are slow and inconsistent, and the Eyes still mock him with their disobedience. He knows his unreliable control won’t be enough for his mother.

Except this time, she doesn’t return.  
  


* * *

  
Toal finds him in the library. Nobody bothered to keep Hugo from going in there on his own. Since word came of Lady Fact’s death, nobody has seemed to care at all what Hugo does. His father’s study door has been locked, his tutors have stopped coming, and the rest of the household avoids him in the halls, whispering among themselves when they think he can’t hear.

Toal, however, walks right in wearing cloak and full armor, tall enough now that he has to duck through the doorway. He’s determined to take up as much space as possible, it seems.

“What are you doing here?” Hugo spits, once he’s gathered himself enough to speak.

“Looking for you,” Toal says, leaning over Hugo’s desk. Stubble shadows the lower half of his face. He had barely started shaving when he left home. “I never thought it would be the library. I tried everywhere else first.”

Hugo shakes his head, an uncoordinated motion that shields his eyes with his overgrown fringe. “What are you doing _here_. In this house. You made it very clear that you don’t belong with us.”

Toal smiles, of all things. It’s a calm smile, if a little sad, and Hugo—who was ready to jump down his throat a moment earlier, when he expected Toal to put on some pretense of grief—despises him for that restraint instead. “I came to see you. And to speak to Father, but he won’t see me. Of course, that’s no surprise.”

“Get out.”

“I will, in just a minute. I’ve had to put off some urgent business with the Knights, and I must get back quickly if I’m to resolve it in time for the funeral. But before I go—“

“Get out!”

“Everything’s still all or nothing with you, isn’t it? I suppose I shouldn’t blame you, with the examples you’ve had.”

“Get out of our home,” Hugo says, rising from his chair. His eyes are stinging so badly he can’t see at all; and then he _can_ see Toal, tall and bright and shining with the approval of the goddesses, and a wave of dizziness comes over him. He clutches at the back of the chair to stay upright, but Toal is already moving back, one hand upraised as though to ward him off. And Hugo realizes he is seeing his brother with an Eye of Fact.

“Easy!” Toal says, with a note of alarm that fills Hugo with hot satisfaction—but then Hugo blinks, clearing his fleshly eyes, and he loses his grip. The Eye leaves him yet again. Toal raises his eyebrows, the expression so like their mother’s that it hurts. “Made some progress, haven’t you? Not quite enough, but you’ll get there eventually.”

“Get _out_ ,” Hugo says, adding a shove of spirit to make the candles flare in their sconces. And Toal goes, not frightened anymore, but humoring him. Hugo’s never hated anyone more.

He stays there in the library until it’s dark, trying not to cry, thinking of how the Eye came to him when he couldn’t use his real ones. And then he remembers his father's books.

It almost feels nostalgic to be sitting crosslegged on his bedroom floor with a lit candle. Then, of course, he was casting about in the dark in more senses than one. Now he has a book open before him, and he knows precisely what he’s doing.

The enchantment requires a drinking vessel formed of cleria. Fortunately his mother acquired just such an old goblet on her travels, and the housekeeper didn’t ask why he wanted the study unlocked. (Hugo’s certain she was blinking back tears when she opened it.) Hugo pours a measure of wine into it and adds six petals from the raccha flowers that grow on the balcony. Then, with a hand covering the mouth of the cup, he channels the spirit required and whispers a phrase in Roonic, suddenly glad he paid attention to Rico’s advice on pronunciation, even if he never picked up any of the vocabulary.

Steam erupts from between his fingertips. It’s unpleasantly hot under his palm, but he’s grown used to worse. When the heat fades and the steam dies down, he leans forward and sniffs the potion. It smells sweetly of rot, exactly as the text describes. Satisfied, and perhaps a little nervous, he dips the tip of his index finger into the liquid, then touches it to each of his eyelids.

Nothing happens. Then again, nothing is supposed to, just yet. The smell of the potion is beginning to make him nauseous, so he opens the shutters and pours the rest of it out his window and into the garden below. He intends to wait up until he can tell whether it’s worked, but the bone-deep weariness that’s been lurking below the surface ever since he heard the news about his mother begins to rise up to the top. Hugo nods off still sitting on the floor, his head resting at the foot of his bed.

He starts awake with a crick in his neck, disoriented, with no memory of where he is or what he was doing. When that memory comes back, he shuts his eyes tight for a moment, wishing he could as easily shut out the world.

When he opens them it’s still dark. He can’t remember where he left the candle. Then he’s struck by the sound of birds out his still-open window. He puts a hand out to the sill and stands, listening intently—yes, that’s the sound of the gardener speaking to one of the groundsmen. The sun is warm on his face. It’s broad daylight.

Hugo’s first reaction is panic, but he pushes this down ruthlessly. This is what he wanted, _exactly_ what he wanted. He can reverse the spell just as soon as he likes. But first, he has work to do.

An Eye comes to him almost at once. “There!” he says aloud—a little _too_ loud, maybe. He’s not sure who he’s trying to convince. “It seems you just needed proof of my dedication. Let us see what we can do.”

The answer is not very much, just at first. He’s not quite foolhardy enough to begin wielding the Eye as the weapon it is, not until it has become a natural extension of his own spirit. Instead he focuses on its sight. The darkness of his true vision is overlaid with the glowing outlines of his bed, his desk, and his window. He trips over his feet the first few times he tries walking across the room. But eventually this will be as easy as breathing. It has to be, if he’s ever to master the Eye’s deadly aim.

He calls for all his meals in his room and hides himself away, which is apparently to be expected for a young man in grief. Really he’s not ready to test himself on the rest of the house and have his father learn what he’s doing when he falls down the main staircase. A foolish part of him wonders if his father, too, will take this as proof of Hugo’s dedication, but even if he does, far better to demonstrate a newfound competence than a tendency to run into walls. So he doesn’t brew the antidote, but practices until nightfall and falls asleep with the eyes still staring blankly up at his ceiling.

He wakes again to voices outside his window. The gardener is arguing with someone. As an experiment, he summons the Eye and banishes it outside, where it rolls itself about until he has it pointed straight down. And there, he can see the gardener and a groundsman bent over one of the flowerbeds. The flowers and vines themselves are even lovelier in the Eye’s vision, appearing as delicate living flares of white and gold. But the patch right under his window is just dull, bare earth. As the Eye watches, a thin plume of smoke rises from the center.

That, he has to admit, is faintly disturbing. But the potion worked perfectly, so surely the cure will, too. He only needs another day or two to develop his skill. Just until the funeral. He clenches his fists and summons the Eye to his side. Then he notices the lack of feeling in his right index finger, the nail buried in the flesh of his palm. Odd, that.

When the numbness spreads gradually down his forearm, he has to admit ‘odd’ might not be the right word.

He gives up on his practice and sets in to brewing the antidote. It’s not particularly difficult, but his right hand won’t sit right over the top of the goblet, and he has to hold it in place with his left. The spirit he channels into the wine feels sluggish, much like the rest of him. When everything is done, he lifts the goblet to his mouth with relief and drains it dry. Then he crawls into bed, unaccountably tired.

When he wakes, he can’t move his arm at all.

Now he lets himself give into the panic. He did everything right. He’s certain he did everything right. But there’s no time to try again. A servant knocks on his door to deliver Hugo’s mourning suit, freshly pressed, and remind him they must leave for Solomon Shrine within the hour. He doesn’t comment on the platters of half-eaten food scattered about the room, or on Hugo’s appearance, which must be appalling. He does offer to help Hugo dress, an offer Hugo takes with distant relief. He will attend his mother’s funeral. He will do his duty by his father and show Toal no weakness. And then he’ll come back and fix this, and no-one will ever need to know how stupid he’s been.

He conjures up an Eye and bids it shrink until it can hide in the collar of his cloak, and with its help he gets himself downstairs and into the mourning carriage. The walk up to Solomon Shrine is a wretched exercise in incipient disaster. He nearly trips several times, and only realizes Toal has joined the procession when he stumbles right into a suit of blasted armor. He wrenches his arm away from Toal’s grip and makes it the rest of the way on his own.

The ceremony is long, formal, and possibly quite moving, but any inclination Hugo has to grieve is eaten away by the numbness eating its way up his shoulder. It creeps over his chest, settling in his throat so he can barely speak the words of response. He bites his lip and looks unblinkingly ahead, his breath coming short. Soon they can go. Soon he can make this right. So he tells himself while they consign his mother’s remains to Earth and Power, to Spirit and Wisdom and Light, and at last to Time; so he tells himself when the bells ring out the end of the ceremony; so he tells himself on the never-ending walk back out from the Shrine.

“Hugo,” says Toal’s voice at his shoulder. Hugo’s putting all his focus into training the Eye on the ground in front of him, so he hadn’t been able to avoid him. “We should talk, now, while we can. Father hasn’t invited me back to the house.”

“And why should he?” Hugo spends all his breath on this, and he doesn’t have any left to keep Toal from responding.

“I visited House Gemma while you were there,” Toal says. One foot in front of the other. “I would have stopped in to see you, but I didn’t know you were staying with them. I only heard afterward.”

“Good.”

Toal sighs. It’s an explosive, impatient sound, nothing like their mother’s. “Hugo, will you look at me while I talk to you?”

Hugo does try, but his aim is probably off, and as it turns out he can’t look at Toal and keep his feet at the same time. He thinks Toal must have grabbed him under the arm, because otherwise he would have fallen, but he can’t feel any of it.

“Hey,” Toal says, “you look terrible.”

“I’m at a _funeral_ ,” Hugo manages. But that’s all he manages. His legs have disappeared, and his sense of hearing must be going the way of the others, because Toal’s shout is swallowed up in static. The Eye dwindles away into nothing, leaving Hugo disconnected entirely from reality. He can feel his own spirit beginning to fade. _Good_ , he thinks, _that never did me any good, anyway._ Then he doesn’t think much of anything at all.

Hugo drifts back into himself. He is in a soft bed in a clean white room he’s never seen before. Someone’s put a vase of raccha flowers on the bedside table, and the smell turns his stomach.

“Oh! You’re awake,” says a girl’s voice. He turns his head to the other side to see her standing over him, anxious and pleased at the same time. She’s all bright eyes and eager smile. “We thought you might be, today.”

Hugo says something that doesn’t seem to have any actual words in it, but it does come out as a question.

“You’re confused, that’s fine,” the girl says at once. “We thought that would be the case, too. You’re in the Houses of Healing, and you’re recovering very well. I’m Miuscha, one of the novices here.”

“Rico mentioned you,” Hugo produces after a few tries.

She smiles again at this. “Did he? You wouldn’t remember me. We met at dinner once, when you—with the fire. Please don’t try that here, Hugo.”

He’s about to say he’s not that foolish, but then he remembers what got him here in the first place. “Is my father here?”

Her face falls. “Oh, no. I’m sorry. We can send for him, though, now that you’re awake. But you do have another visitor. Let me get one of the senior mages first, and then you can see him.”

He doesn’t want to see Toal, but it’s such a relief to be able to see anything at all that Hugo doesn’t object. When Toal walks in, he isn’t wearing his ridiculous armor, for once. It makes him look smaller. Hugo approves.

Toal comes straight up to the bed and puts a hand out, not quite resting it on Hugo’s shoulder. “Hugo.”

“What happened?”

Toal lifts his eyebrows. “You blinded yourself. If I understand correctly, that was exactly what the spell you cast was designed to do, before it decided that wasn’t enough and tried for the rest of you as well. What did you think would happen?”

“But they reversed it,” Hugo says. He tries not to make this a question. “The mages said—”

“Yes, because you were lucky and didn’t make it back to your room on your own. If you had, you probably would have died there! Hugo, what kind of stupid experiment were you doing?”

“A training exercise.” Hugo lets himself slide back into his spirit for a moment. It’s easy, as weak as he feels. An Eye of Fact leaps into life over his bed, and it remains there, awaiting his command. He nearly shudders with relief. “And it worked.”

Toal looks up at the Eye, wary and thoughtful. Perhaps, though this is likely Hugo’s wishful thinking in a weak moment, even impressed. “Well,” Toal says, “I suppose you’ll have something to show Father, if that’s what you were hoping for. _I_ was hoping you might have grown up a little and found other things to care about.”

The Eye swivels around to stare at Toal accusingly. “How could I?” Hugo demands, anger lending him strength. “You left. I haven’t had a choice! You knew everything I’d have to do—every damn thing I’d have to learn in your place—and you _left_.”

“Yes,” Toal says after a moment. “I did, didn’t I? It was in service to the goddesses, and even in service to my own happiness. But I suppose you have a right to blame me for that.”

“I don’t want to blame you,” Hugo says, appalled at the words coming out of his own mouth. They aren’t nearly as fierce as he meant them to be. “That’s not good enough. I want—” He catches himself, drawing deeply on the spirit of the Eye until he has control again. He turns his face away, turning the Eye, too, so he doesn’t have to see Toal glow with the goddesses’ blessing.

Before he has quite mastered himself, Toal’s hand lifts from the bed. “I understand,” he says quietly. “Believe me, I do. And I am sorry. I should have known you couldn’t walk away like I did. But Hugo, if you ever need something this badly again, I hope you’ll find an easier way. You could start by asking for help.” He rises. “I’ll send a message to let Father know you can come home. You should write to that Rico Gemma, too. He’s been asking after you. Goodbye, Hugo.”

Hugo waits until the door has closed behind Toal before he banishes the Eye. He lies there, waiting for his breath to grow less ragged and his eyes to dry. For a moment he wishes he could take Toal’s advice and just walk away—perhaps to House Gemma, where they might let him live the rest of his life between a comfortable chair in their library and the fountain in their garden. He could find an easier way. He could choose to spit on his father’s legacy and cast aside everything his mother expected him to achieve, as Toal has done.

Toal, who never even attempted the Eyes.

Hugo isn’t a Holy Knight, and he isn’t a Gemma. He is a Fact, and the power he was born to can’t be found in sacred blessings or wise sayings. It is one he must continue to take for himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Morbane, who had an unerring eye for the weaknesses in my first draft!


End file.
